Day 3 ~ 30 Day Photo Challenge & A Haboob

I live in Texas, seriously dust capital of the world. Maybe the Sahara is first, so they deserve a shout out, what up dry, dirty heat? But we are running a close second.

Todays photo challenge was supposed to be a cloud, and I have a bunch of cool pics from last year, but I wanted to get something more recent.

(One of my fav’s from last year)

Then the Haboob entered my life…What is a haboob? Glad you asked. According to the Glossary of Meteorology by the American Meteorological Society, a haboob is defined as “A strong wind and sandstorm or duststorm in northern and central Sudan, especially around Khartoum, where the average number is about 24 a year”. Obviously, haboobs don’t just occur in Sudan, but in general, almost any desert region. From the Arabic word habb, meaning “wind”, haboobs are most common during the months May through September. Haboobs form on the edge of a thunderstorm as cold downdrafts. These downdrafts lift sand and dust into a large cloud. These clouds can extend horizontally for over 90 miles and rise as high as the base of a thunderstorm. In some cases, they can produce dust devils and tornadoes. In the case of the Arizona haboob, the leading edge of the storm extended nearly 100 miles and traveled 150 miles.

I’m sorry, did you see the panhandle of Texas mentioned ANYWHERE in that? Nope, neither did I…

Honestly is was quite creepy. The offspring and myself stood on the back porch and watched. It was eerily quite and perfectly still before it hit. Totally like Wizard of Oz, watching this massive thing, stretching as far as we could see, left to right. It was coming towards us to the South, but the dirt in the cloud was moving West to East. I have never, ever seen anything like it. Felt like it just hovered over our house for forever before it actually hit.

unedited before it hit the house…

unedited…

edited with the ‘yellow’ out…

unedited, before the chairs ‘lifted’ everything was orange, crazy orange for reals, and covered in inches of dirt. I wasn’t about to go back out there…but I did to chase down everything pictured, just opted to NOT take the camera. If you notice, you can hardly see the roof’s of the homes behind us, it is very faint.

Kicking myself for not getting out sooner and getting pictures from it being further away.

Not all of the photo challenge post will be quite this long, in my eyes, it is supposed to be short and simple, but I felt this needed a description.